We lost a dear feline family member recently. Her name was Marley, and she was a fixture of our lives for many years. We first met Marley when she lived in the garden set along a cobblestone path behind a parking garage on the medical school campus where my wife Susan and I worked. While it was Susan who first suggested that we rescue this beautiful and very independently minded tortoiseshell-colored cat, it was I who would become not only Marley’s principal guardian and soul mate, but also her chef, nurse, and primary care advocate. My role as a care provider became particularly urgent when Marley was first diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and later with lymphoma.
Marley made many human friends and acquaintances while living on her own, which I have briefly described in her eulogy. Even so, it was remarkable how well Marley adapted to living confined in a suburban home on a cul-de-sac and that she never asked to go outside. Rather, she seemed quite content to monitor the activities of our yard and their gardens, trees and bird houses and other wild animals from within the warmth and safety of our house atop perches strategically located by windows. It wouldn’t be long either before Marley and I developed a deep bond. One late spring evening Marley sat atop one of her perches peering through the screen of an open window transfixed by the piercing screeches of foxes hidden under the large evergreen in our back yard. The foxes had taken up residence under the shed of a neighbor and would occasionally saunter calmly into our backyard providing undoubted entertainment for a cat obsessively surveilling the landscape. When it became clear that this racket was going to go on even longer, I made a loud and sustained shushing sound in the hopes of distracting the foxes and silencing them, even temporarily, from making the racket. It worked. The foxes became quiet as mice. Marley turned and looked at me in seeming amazement at my command of those wild hooligans. She then extended her face to mine and touched my nose with hers. I took the sweet gesture as Marley’s way of conveying to me that I was now her trusted friend and defender.
We often view those who are adept at communicating to others among the human species as very talented and fortunate. Perhaps the even greater talent, though, is the ability to listen to and comprehend the communications of those around us. But earnest listening requires compassion, caring, and patience. True listening is the wisdom of acknowledging the needs and desires of those around us to be heard and understood.[1] During my twenty-seven years working at a college of medicine I observed how much attention is given to training medical students on how to understand and interpret the symptoms expressed by patients in the clinical environment in order to achieve an accurate diagnosis and correct treatment. It seems that ability is as much an art as it is a science. One author poetically characterized those subtle expressions of patient’s communication that go beyond the obvious symptoms as laments—the vague pleas and signals of distress, grief, anxiety, and suffering—which are often misread, misunderstood, or ignored.[2] Now consider the challenges of relating to the obscure plaints of another species, even those with whom we have intimately shared years of our lives, namely our beloved pets. Below is a journal of my journey with Marley—a medical history, case study, and memorial. I draw from an archive of medical, feeding, and supplementation records, images, and communications with her veterinarians, interjected with personal recollections, anecdotes, and meditations. In my discussion, I reference scientific studies pertaining to her illnesses and on the foods, medicines, herbs, and supplements she was given, and treatments provided, offering opinions and conclusions, based on the evidence, of what helped Marley and, importantly, how many of her cries were sadly too often ignored, misinterpreted, or misunderstood. It is my hope—and not without a sense of profound sadness and regret—that in the observations and remembrances that follow I will, at long last, give due voice and recognition to the laments of Marley.
A thousand regrets at deserting you
and leaving behind your loving face,
I feel so much sadness and such painful distress,
that it seems to me my days will soon dwindle away.[3]
We adopted Marley in 2008. Although she seemed pretty young and was not a kitten, we had no idea of Marley’s age at this time because up to this point she had been living among the tall grasses and other plants along a garden walkway behind a large parking garage on campus. Passersby would leave her treats on the edge of a drainage grating near a tree. Marley befriended a feline-loving woman named Liz. She met Liz every morning in the parking garage and would climb into Liz’s car to get a piece of tuna. Liz took Marley to vet appointments for checkups, vaccinations, and to be spayed. Liz wanted to adopt Marley but this little tabby-tortoise feral kitty was too independent for Liz’s other cats. When we decided to adopt Marley, we foolishly thought we could easily coax her into a cat carrier, but she was too savvy to even let herself be seen by us. We suspected that Marley traversed the irrigation piping to travel undetected from one end of the garden to the other because when we thought she was hiding nearby in front of us she would magically vanish and was nowhere to be found. We had to rely on Marley’s special friend Liz to capture our new friend, beginning a dramatically new life for the little feline, and for us.
Once Marley got accustomed to her new surroundings and the rumbles of the furnace and other unusual sounds in the house and realized that the ceiling fans were not hawks ready to swoop down on her, she acclimated quite well to her new home. In those early days we were all doing our best to become acquainted. If petting was not done according to her precise wishes, one could be the recipient of a swift smack from a closed-claw paw. Or, if you prematurely stopped petting you might find that a kitty’s paw is clutching your ankle.
One of the first things I set about in caring for Marley was to ensure that she received optimal care. My definition of this concept derived in large part from my years of study of the fundamentals necessary for optimal human health: healthy food and complete nutrition, pure air and water, a clean and toxic-free environment. These goals are difficult enough to achieve or maintain for humans, let alone for our pets (note to the reader: you most likely won’t hear a discussion or receive sound advice on these topics from your local allopathic veterinarian). I briefly discuss and provide links to additional educational material on the low nutritional quality of commercial kibble and many canned pet foods on my Feline Resources page. Kibble and canned products are considered ultraprocessed foods, so it doesn’t take much imagination to suspect that these are low quality or nutritionally dead foods, especially when one learns of the often shockingly poor quality proteins that are often utilized, to which synthetic vitamins and minerals have been added to make them ‘nutritionally balanced’. Add to this is the fact that the high heat processing of these foods produces what are called advanced glycation end products (AGEs) which are implicated in a host of diseases in cats and dogs, including chronic kidney disease, obesity, cancer, skin diseases, and others. You might have noticed that some vets actually pedal some of these pet foods to their patients, a point to which I will return to a little later with a comparison of the nutritional analysis of the food recommended by a vet for Marley compared to what I was feeding her. It about broke my heart when I saw a pet parent with a giant bag of kibble walking out of the clinic I used to take Marley. I wanted to run up to him and say “that bag of pet food is carcinogenic!” but I didn’t, for obvious reasons. Early on a vet at this clinic tried to sell me on this processed food. “They live a long time on this” he said confidently. Even by this time then I had read enough on feline nutrition not to be fooled by such hucksterism and responded with silence.
Within a few months of Marley’s arrival her diet was transitioned to wet (canned) food. Besides the poor nutritional quality of kibble such a diet does not provide enough hydration for cats. However, it was difficult to find canned food that did not contain “meal”, but also grains, and legumes which are not only nutritionally inappropriate for felines, but can cause gastric distress and irritation. I continued to search for better options.
[1] Bub, B. (2004). The patient’s lament: Hidden key to effective communication: How to recognise and transform. Medical Humanities, 30, 63-69. doi: 10.1136/jmh.2004.000164.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Anonymous sixteenth-century poem.
Peter S. Poulos, PhD 